According to press reports in the US and UK, Ireland remains the favoured destination for the micro-blogging website.

The UK has pulled out all the stops to get Twitter to set up there, even employing Prime Minister David Cameron to sell the city, but Ireland's corporate tax rate of 12.5pc is something that the UK cannot match.

Britain's corporate tax rate is 28pc.

Expertise

Last month it was reported in British media that the company had chosen London as the site for its HQ, but 'Forbes' magazine has suggested the tax rate, combined with an increasingly tech-savvy population here, may prove tempting to Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo and chairman Jack Dorsey.

Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are entrenched in Ireland, as are older computing companies such as IBM and Intel. It is believed that Twitter may be tempted to tap into the expertise that has come out of having so many tech firms based in Dublin and the surrounding area.

Founded by Mr Dorsey in 2006, Twitter quickly mushroomed from a way to keep in touch with his friends to a celebrity-packed site with around 200 million users.

It is estimated to have had revenues of around $150m (€113m) last year. The IDA is believed to have held extensive negotiations with Twitter already in the hope of attracting them to here.

Last October, Mr Dorsey told an audience in Dublin that "timing was everything" if a business was to succeed.

"I tried an idea similar to Twitter back in 2000 but back then not everyone had smartphones, so there just wasn't a gap in the market for it and I ended up putting it in a drawer for a few years," he said.